3:10 To Yuma

1957's 3:10 TO YUMA has been called a revisionist Western, and I guess I can see that.  It shares a few things with pictures like HIGH NOON, depicting town citizens as human, often scared.  Not always heroic.  I guess that depends on your definition.  In both movies, men with guns are recruited to help the protagonist stop a gang of criminals descending upon a town.  As the hour grows nigh, the participants have second thoughts, citing that they have families to think of.  You can see their point.  Dan Evans also has a wife and two boys.  His ranch is threatened by a long drought.  But his ultimate purpose, like that of Marshall Will Kane, may be higher.

Evans (Van Heflin) finds himself volunteering to escort Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), the leader of a gang he and his sons witnessed rob a stagecoach, on the titular train, bound for a prison.  The fella who killed the driver.  Wade is a well known bad dude, ruthless but charming.  There's a long sequence early on as Ben beguiles a lonely barmaid, as perfect a character establishment as I've seen in a Western.  3:10 TO YUMA was based on an Elmore Leonard short story, and Halsted Welles' adaptation retains the complexity of this most interesting of antiheroes, if you can call him that.  This is not a white hat/black hat Western in the most generic sense.  Much credit must be given to Ford for bringing this multidimensional shit kicker to life.  

He taunts Evans during a long afternoon in a hotel room, as they wait for the train.  Heflin's Evans matches him with earnestness that is not so untarnished as to not be tempted by offers of more than the mere $200 that Mr. Butterfield (Robert Emhardt), the owner of that stagecoach, has put up.  A most interesting relationship develops between the men, one that I'm not sure is to be seen in more traditional, John Wayne-type oaters.  

Director Delmer Daves cut a real diamond with 3:10 TO YUMA, fashioning a taut drama teeming with suspense.  Charles Lawton Jr.'s black and white cinematography sparkles, perfect for the film's mood.  It's a nicely plotted movie that doesn't really live or die by its plot.  Without the two leads' solid and deep performances (and dialogue), the movie may have just been another genre piece, a half remembered matinee.  But the overall examination of the role of the male, manhood itself, as well as the Higher Purpose within, also distinguishes this classic film.